Contents

General

European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) is an informal forum bringing together around 50 chief executives and chairmen of major multinational companies of European parentage covering a wide range of industrial and technological sectors.

Background

website, january 2013

Companies of ERT Members are widely situated across Europe, with sales to EU customers exceeding Euro 1 000 billion, thereby sustaining around 6.6 million jobs in the region. Overall, the contribution of ERT Member Companies to EU GDP exceeds that of 21 of the 27 EU Member States.

The European Round Table of Industrialists was born out of a growing preoccupation with the state of the European economy in the early 1980s. Frequently diagnosed as “eurosclerosis”, the symptoms were an evident lack of dynamism, innovation and competitiveness in comparison with Japan and the United States. European markets, with the exception of agriculture, were still national, despite the Single Market objective set by the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Economies of scale were very hard to achieve and the burden of red tape was stultifying.